The good and bad of USB flash drives

I love my Kingston 2Gb USB flash drive that I picked up for $5 in December. It replaced my old 128Mb flash drive that I had carried my files around with for the past two years. Other than 1 worm that it picked up from a computer in a copy shop (AVG took care of that one easily enough), it had been great for carrying around my important files. With a 2Gb drive now, I carry around a ton of files around and can’t imagine how I lived with only 128Mb of storage! So imagine my horror when I walked to the car the other day and noticed that I had lost my trusty flash drive. I had set it on top of some tablets and textbooks, and proceeded to walk out the door carrying the stack of stuff. Thankfully it was quickly found on the chair I had been sitting on, but the incident highlighted how easily these little flash drives can be lost. And other forms of storage are even smaller … my 2Gb MicroSD card is the size of the fingernail on my pinkie. I never cease to be amazed by how small these things are nowadays. I used to think SD cards were small! So, the bottom line is that if you’re carrying any flash media, be careful to keep up with it and back up anything you have on it. And if you’re carrying sensitive files (including passwords, scans of identification, etc.), then be extremely careful! I’ll try to be more careful in the future, that’s for sure.